An information processing apparatus including a smart phone displays a plurality of icons serving as shortcuts of applications in a home screen and prompts a user to select one of the icons displayed in the home screen so as to activate an application corresponding to the selected icon, for example.
However, when an application currently used is to be switched to a target application in a state in which a number of applications have been installed, a user performs a complicated operation to find the target application in a number of applications.
In order to reduce such a load of the operation performed by the user, International Publication Pamphlet No. WO2008/096596 discloses a system in which an application to be used next is automatically recommended in accordance with situations of use of applications by the user. The recommendation system obtains and manages past generation situations in which events generated before applications are activated, time points of the generation, and positions of the generation are associated with each other for individual applications as a history. When detecting generation of an event, the recommendation system searches for an application corresponding to a past generation situation similar to a current generation situation with reference to the history and recommends the application to a user.
Furthermore, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2005-229310 discloses a system in which a combination of commands frequently used is registered in a menu as a single command menu with reference to a history. The system is different from the technique of recommending a target application selected from among a number of applications to a user.